The refurbishment project of Serpentine House, designed by Yrjö Lindegren to Mäkelänkatu in Helsinki’s Käpylä district, has won the Finlandia Prize for Architecture.
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According to the selector of this year’s winner, Hannu Väisänen, who’s a famous Finnish graphic artist and author, the Serpentine House belongs to the most shining pearls of Finnish architecture.
“When such an iconic building is falling into decay, when it’s falling apart, saving it requires great professional skill and relentless sisu, guts,” Väisänen says in his argument.
“The repairers must think about how to recreate a utopic idea of a rental house of high-quality. It doesn’t have the dirty looks of a tenement building in the literature of Charles Dickens, Emile Zola or Franz Kafka, but instead the building provides its tenants a design that increases their self-esteem.”
Serpentine House was opened in 1952 and is owned by the City of Helsinki. Helsinki listed the building March 2014.
The building was badly deteriorated and underwent extensive renovations.
The apartments still include original furnishings, which were also be repaired.
The renovation of the first building was finished in May 2018 and it is now a lighter color closer to the original 1950s look.
The renovation of the second building started in fall 2018.
Alongside the Serpentine House refurbishment project, other projects on the 2019 Finlandia Prize for Architecture shortlist were the Helsinki Central Library Oodi, the refurbishment of Jyväskylä University’s Main Building, Kruunuvuorenranta Waste Transfer Terminal
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